Enter The Matrix: Slice out and get the best part from your hard drives

Ok guys got the new Barracuda, so disconnected the Failing one, and connected the new one, but now the RAID0 Volume is reported as FAILED, and the RAID1 as REBUILD, but Vista won't boot, so which is the correct process to follow?

Sorry but I'm really new to the RAID side of the world

your gona need to manualy rebuild the raid 0... remake it and install vista again. and the raid 1 should auto rebuild itself.

i think.

Well it's doing what is expected...

When one drive dies or is removed from a Raid0 array... the raid0 array can no longer function, as what is stored on the array, is shared across all the drives in the array... take one drive away and a chunk of the information is now missing, so it won't work any more.

The Raid1 arrrays have the same information on each drive (and Raid5 have enough information about what is on each drive, that they can rebuild a single missing drive without a problem)

What you've done, is broken up your raid0 array.

I believe there are programs that allow you to clone a drive that is part of a raid0 array straight onto another identical drive, (on another PC), but if I understand you correctly, you are going from a 2 x drive setup to a 3 x drive setup?

In that case, you are going to have to either take an image of the arrays and then clone them back on after you've created the 3 x drive arrays, or alternatively, back up the data that you want to keep and then start from scratch again, and then put the data back on. The latter is much simpler or course, but if you're familiar with programs like BartPE or have access to programs like Acronis or Ghost, then the former won't be a problem for you.

Hope that all makes sense.

Thanx, but meanwhile I deleted and rebuild both RAID Volume and restored data using Acronis backup, but Vista won't start anyway, so right now I Repaired Vista, and now I'm logging In.. going to check if all is OK

*EDITED: ok all went fine in the process, now I'm going to test the 3rd disk, the failing one, out of raid volume because looking at the disk I realized was On the jumper to limit disk speed at sata150, so maybe.. and if still failing, after RMA will rebuild the Raid volume this time in Raid0/5 using 3 disks

The Doors said:

Ok guys got the new Barracuda, so disconnected the Failing one, and connected the new one, but now the RAID0 Volume is reported as FAILED, and the RAID1 as REBUILD, but Vista won't boot, so which is the correct process to follow?

Sorry but I'm really new to the RAID side of the world

Click to expand...

The Doors said:

Thanx, but meanwhile I deleted and rebuild both RAID Volume and restored data using Acronis backup, but Vista won't start anyway, so right now I Repaired Vista, and now I'm logging In.. going to check if all is OK

*EDITED: ok all went fine in the process, now I'm going to test the 3rd disk, the failing one, out of raid volume because looking at the disk I realized was On the jumper to limit disk speed at sata150, so maybe.. and if still failing, after RMA will rebuild the Raid volume this time in Raid0/5 using 3 disks

Click to expand...

Suggestion : Once your Raid 0 is up and fully installed, then do install "AGAIN" the OS at the RAID 1/5/10 volume, don't forget to switch at the bios for the Raid 1/5/10 (not raid 0) as boot drive 1st, and then do the OS installation in it.

So next time when the Raid 0 failed, you can boot using the Raid 1/5/10's OS (once its finished the building) for recovery works at the RAID 0 volume, you only need to change at the bios which volume to boot, usually is at Raid 0 for matrix raid.

About the OS installation at the Raid 1/5/10 volume, only put slim & mean, small footprint OS, and possibly put in there some diagnostic and image restoring programs like Acronis, so you can easily restore the whole OS in the Raid 0 in really short time, especially you've saved the Raid 0 image in the Raid 1/5/10 volume.

Hope this helps and imo this method will reduce your rig's downtime.

OT, Hi to al matrix-ers, especially Fritzman, its nice to see you're keeping this thread alive and helping a lot of others, really appreciate that ! Thank you sir !

Currently I'm out of the this "matrix" world and not following these matrix's scenes since I'm travelling alot using laptop now ! Really miss all this matrix's fun.

bing said:

Suggestion : Once your Raid 0 is up and fully installed, then do install "AGAIN" the OS at the RAID 1/5/10 volume, don't forget to switch at the bios for the Raid 1/5/10 (not raid 0) as boot drive 1st, and then do the OS installation in it.

So next time when the Raid 0 failed, you can boot using the Raid 1/5/10's OS (once its finished the building) for recovery works at the RAID 0 volume, you only need to change at the bios which volume to boot, usually is at Raid 0 for matrix raid.

About the OS installation at the Raid 1/5/10 volume, only put slim & mean, small footprint OS, and possibly put in there some diagnostic and image restoring programs like Acronis, so you can easily restore the whole OS in the Raid 0 in really short time, especially you've saved the Raid 0 image in the Raid 1/5/10 volume.

Hope this helps and imo this method will reduce your rig's downtime.

OT, Hi to al matrix-ers, especially Fritzman, its nice to see you're keeping this thread alive and helping a lot of others, really appreciate that ! Thank you sir !

Currently I'm out of the this "matrix" world and not following these matrix's scenes since I'm travelling alot using laptop now ! Really miss all this matrix's fun.

Click to expand...

Thanks bing... nice to see you are still around buddy.

That's a great suggestion, and I'm surprised more guys don't do it. Having a very 'lean' install of Vista on the 2nd Array works really well, and gives you the immediate ability to boot (when the raid0 fails), and then as you say... once you've sorted the raid0, restore it from an earlier image.

I always found that restoring from within windows worked far better than from a boot CD... I always seemed to have to do some work to get the restores from CD-boots working properly.

The Doors said:

Thanx, but meanwhile I deleted and rebuild both RAID Volume and restored data using Acronis backup, but Vista won't start anyway, so right now I Repaired Vista, and now I'm logging In.. going to check if all is OK

*EDITED: ok all went fine in the process, now I'm going to test the 3rd disk, the failing one, out of raid volume because looking at the disk I realized was On the jumper to limit disk speed at sata150, so maybe.. and if still failing, after RMA will rebuild the Raid volume this time in Raid0/5 using 3 disks

Click to expand...

Great work. Glad you had an image to restore.

As I said earlier... You'll love the 3-drive arrays, and I hope removing the jumper makes a difference... iirc I never ran any of mine with the jumper on, and I doubt it will solve you issue, but you never know.

hitek420 said:

Here is my 100gb raid-0 slice with a pair of Seagate 7200.12 418AS 500GB on the ICH10R, first raid setup so I just used the default 128k stripe.

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Burst speed too slow. Enable writeback cache.

Thanks a lot Bing, really appreciate, and I will do it soon, it sound really a good in case of issue

rainless said:

Not really. Minimum is too low. Make sure you have Writeback Cache enabled int he Matrix Storage Manager

Click to expand...

Same results enabling writeback cache, any other idea please???

The Doors said:

Same results enabling writeback cache, any other idea please???

Click to expand...

Try re-running the same (Atto) test, but with a queue depth of 10 and post that please.

fritzman said:

Try re-running the same (Atto) test, but with a queue depth of 10 and post that please.

Click to expand...

Thanks Fritzman, but where I select depth 10??? and it could be related to the 'wrong' Sata port used? I wanna mean port number..

The Doors said:

Thanks Fritzman, but where I select depth 10??? and it could be related to the 'wrong' Sata port used? I wanna mean port number..

Click to expand...

In Atto.. on the right hand side, about an inch down from the top... there is a drop-down box for Queue Depth. Set it to 10 and re-run the test.



I see comment was made about burst rate being low... it might be, but to me anyway, everything looks fine for two 16Mb cache drives set up the way you have them.

Re wrong ports... I may have missed it, but what ports are they on?

I have no experience with the UD4 boards, but others will have. (I actuallyhave a UD5 on the way lol)

No luck Fritzman to Run ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.34 under Vista 64Bit, I will try under XP, anyway I'm using Sata ports 1 & 3 both Master, Disks used are the 32Mb cache version and as said before writeback cache is enabled, also for Raid1 volume..

Interesting... should run if you right-click the atto executable and select 'run as administrator' from memory. I know I ran it on mine last week.

I thought those drives only came in a 16Mb version?

Works works..

Note: Advanced Performance option in Device Manager\Disk Drives is Disabled due to lack of UPS, and to avoid Data loss..

Here's a quick question (save me searching and reading heaps, as I'm about to install Windows.. like right now)

Should I enable AHCI?

I never have previously, and wonder whether NCQ is available to raided drives?

Cheers for a quick answer.

B

I did for the first time when I setup my first Matrix RAID 0 & RAID 1 array on my pair of WDC WD1002FBYS-01A6B0 drives.

When I set the RAID option in my Asus BIOS, AHCI was what I ended up with.

On my UD4 Mobo I had to use RAID on ICH10r instead of AHCI..

Hello.
I was wondering if it's possible to create a non-raid partition off a unallocated space on a raid member? Etc i'll add a 5th drive (1TB) to my raid 0 array (80GB array),i'll slice 20 GB off for raid 0 , and i'll have 980GB remaining space.Will i be able to use that left-over space somehow?(not in raid). I googled it and i got different opinions,including one that only vista and windows 7 supports that configuration, just looking for confirmation.

Thanks!

Seregaknorrr said:

Hello.
I was wondering if it's possible to create a non-raid partition off a unallocated space on a raid member? Etc i'll add a 5th drive (1TB) to my raid 0 array (80GB array),i'll slice 20 GB off for raid 0 , and i'll have 980GB remaining space.Will i be able to use that left-over space somehow?(not in raid). I googled it and i got different opinions,including one that only vista and windows 7 supports that configuration, just looking for confirmation.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

I do not believe so.

I am unaware of the Windows7 possibility, but afaik, the ICHxR chipset doesn't allow it.